How to Create a Yoga Workshop

I dedicated my morning to work on my upcoming "Free Yourself from Hand, Wrist and Carpal Tunnel Problems" yoga workshop.  When it comes to creating and presenting a yoga workshop, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work required, and it was just that sort of work that I settled in for today.

I'd been telling my students for a couple of weeks that sometime late in January I would offer a wrist workshop.  I like to do this pre-advertising to gauge interest.  At first I just said I'd give a workshop, then I asked a few classes if they preferred a wrist workshop or a knee workshop.  People got excited about wrists (it isn't done as often as knees, I suspect) and so I had my topic.

Thankfully, in my teacher training our final project was to give a workshop.  We had to not only design and teach the workshop, but also create flyers, advertising materials, a marketing plan and handouts for students.  We wrote up an outline, a description, and a proposal for the hosting studio.  It was tedious, and not the kind of work that we who are passionate about teaching get excited over.  It is a necessary component, however, to the work.  If I want to share my teaching with a lot of people, it is imperative that I understand how to make classes and workshops go - and go smoothly.  I need to be good at this part of the job so that the part about which I am passionate can run in an organized, professional and heart-felt manner.

As I've directed Maple Leaf Community Yoga for almost four years, I have developed a workshop-production system that streamlines my efforts.  I know that I need the following things as I develop my workshop:

• a description which includes title, day, time, cost, and description that I think is accurate (and which I hope is also enticing)
• an outline, from which I will teach the workshop
  • this contains everything from "Who is my target audience" type questions to the actual items I will teach, from introductions to Savasana
  • the outline could also serve as the proposal, were I to offer it at someone else's studio...it shows the amount of thought and preparation I have already put into the workshop
• flyers
• updates to the website
• list of potential marketing aids (including web-oriented tools such as craigslist.com and teachstreet.com), places to post fliers, professional colleagues who may help spread the word
• an enthusiastic shout-out to my e-mailing list
• handouts for the workshop participants, as appropriate

I have templates for some of these items, such as the description page, outline, flyer and handouts.  All I have to do is customize it with the workshop's pertinent information.  Coming up with that information can take some time, but for me it is a vital part of the creative process.  It is like creating a storyline for a movie or novel.  I list the important parts, pivotal aspects, and fill in the details from there.  It can be daunting to sit down and plan a 3-hour workshop.  "How on earth am I going to fill three hours?" is what I used to think, until the first time I taught my Pelvic Floor workshop.  Originally it was a 2-hour workshop but I had to rush to fit in as much of my planned content as possible (some content had to be left out entirely).  Now I'm thankful I have three hours to fill, and experienced enough to know how workshops tend to play out...and fill out.

So how do I go about creating these helpful items?  I start with deciding on a day and time for the workshop.  Logistics out of the way, I move on to the description.  Sometimes I make a working title first, but I find that it usually changes as I re-write the description.  From there, I have the beginnings of my advertising materials, website information and flyers, because I can just copy the details and description and drop them into place.  I try to keep things standardized so that as students become familiar with my website and the studio flyers their eye knows where to go for pertinent information such as topic, day/time and cost.

Next I start on the outline, because the handout (if I am giving one) will grow from there.  I lay out my outline in the same way I used to draft research paper outlines in college:

1. Intros
   1. me
   2. them
   3. why we're here
2. Anatomy of the hand, wrist and carpal tunnel
   1. use Mr. Bones
   2. show diagrams or photos
   3. discuss the basics of the anatomy and if/how it lends itself toward issues
3. Root causes of hand and wrist pain
   1. energetics
   2. posture
   3. repetitive stress
   4. nutrition (i.e. how one's diet can cause inflammation)
4. Exercises to alleviate, prevent and heal hand and wrist pain
   1. You didn't really think I was going to give it all away right here, did you?
   2. You'll have to sign up for the workshop, like everybody else.  :-)
5. etc., etc., etc all the way through the wrap-up and thank yous.

The outline helps me clarify what I want to cover, get a feel for any gaps in knowledge or information (i.e. where can I get a really good diagram of the inside of a wrist and do I need copyright permission to use it?, etc.).  It clearly marks any further preparation I'll need to do.  Once my outline is completed to my satisfaction - as in, I could use it to give the workshop today - then I decide if this is a workshop that needs a hand-out or not.  Generally, I base that decision upon whether the workshop is meant to be experiential or educational.  If I just want them to experience it, then offering a handout helps them let go of the need to take notes.  If it is educational then I would probably still have an outline but it would be more abridged, as I would also expect participants to take more notes.  After all, they are ostensibly there because they want to learn something and/or make a change.  It is in their best interest to retain as much of the material as possible.

I'm really thankful for my years of work as an administrative assistant, both as a civilian and while in the Air Force.  I tend to be organized and process-oriented anyway, but during those years I really honed some important administrative skills that serve me well as I run my business(es).  Also, I learned how to confidently make my way around Microsoft Office Suite, so I am comfortable with Publisher, Excel & Word - programs that I regularly use in the day-to-day operations of the studio.

So, here you have an inside peek into what I do when I'm working but not, necessarily, teaching.  I would say that I spent about two hours preparing this workshop today.  That included deciding for sure on the day/time/etc. through the first draft of an outline.  I got it posted on the studio website, and made a flyer to put on the door.  Next time I sit down to work on it, I'll need to do a craigslist write-up, e-mail a shout-out to my mailing list, and continue working on the outline.  It's been awhile since I came up with a new (to me) workshop, and I feel enthusiastic about the topic and the teaching.

My goal is to develop a library of workshop topics so that in the future I have already-prepared workshop from which to choose.  All I will have to do is decide on a topic, day and time (assuming I made any changes/updates I want after receiving feedback from the first presentation).  My workshop library is building, and it feels great to have another solid, important topic to add to it.